Cleveland Design Competition challenge: Create new Campus International School near CSU

View full sizeCleveland Design CompetitionAn outline superimposed on a satellite photo describes the area identified by the Cleveland Design Competition as the potential site of a new Campus International School.

CLEVELAND, Ohio — The dream of creating a permanent, architecturally dramatic new home for the fledgling Campus International School at Cleveland State University is still just that -- a dream.

But it will take more definite shape by August, thanks to a locally sponsored global design competition launched on Monday to envision how such a building could elevate standards for public-school architecture in Cleveland and achieve landmark quality.

"We're so excited," said Julie Beers, principal of the school, which opened in August and will outgrow its temporary, rented quarters in the First United Methodist Church at East 30th Street and Euclid Avenue by 2013.

Beers said the school, which now has an enrollment of 126, will likely have to find another temporary home before a permanent one is built to house a student population growing by 60 or more children a year.

Cleveland State University and the Cleveland Municipal School District launched the project as one of 17 "Innovative Schools" envisioned in the academic "turnaround plan" created under former schools CEO Eugene Sanders.

The school took all applicants in its first year but is now using a lottery to fill 72 spots from a list of 160 applicants, Beers said. Sixty-five percent of the openings are reserved for children from Cleveland, 20 percent for families affiliated with CSU and 15 percent are available for children from Cleveland suburbs.

The deadline for the first round of applications ended Friday, April 29, but students can still apply to be on a waiting list, Beers said.

The school is "international" in the sense that it follows a curriculum developed in 1968 by the nonprofit International Baccalaureate foundation, which has its Americas base in Bethesda, Md.

Beers said the foundation originally developed a high school curriculum to serve diplomats going from country to country.

"The goal is to promote international-mindedness and make the world a better place," she said.

A key part of the vision for the school is that it would have a permanent home near CSU to facilitate long-term collaboration with the university.

The contest to generate ideas for the new school is sponsored by the Cleveland Design Competition, organized by architectural designers Michael Christoff and Bradley Fink, now in its fourth year.

Fink and Christoff announced this year's competition theme on their website on Monday.

The designers are both 29 and have yet to complete their architectural license exams. But their competition, which capitalizes on the Internet, is shaking up the local design community by focusing fresh thinking from around the world on the city.

The competition is intended to generate ideas only. Cleveland State University, which plans to support the school academically, has said it won't put money into a new building.

The school district, which will likely seek private funding for construction, has no immediate plans to pursue the project, Beers said.

But the design competition has a note of heightened realism because the university has announced a preferred site for the school: the block bounded by Payne and Superior avenues between East 18th and 19th streets. The block, owned primarily by the city of Cleveland, is mostly devoted to surface parking.

Fink and Christoff have also included in the competition part of the block just to the east of CSU's preferred location for the school, simply as part of their effort to generate fresh ideas for the school and the barren zone north of the university's campus.

View full sizePlain Dealer fileThe Third District police station under construction in 1925.

The additional half-block, bounded by Payne Avenue to the south, the Tower Press Building to the north, and East 19th and 21st streets, includes a city-owned parking lot and the historic, 1920s-era Third District Police Station, which the city has contemplated closing.

Christoff said the competition is intended in part to generate ideas on how the police station could be reused as a school.

Although the university has no plans to invest in eventual construction of the school, administrators are excited by the design competition.

"I think it's a great idea to submit a project like this [the school] to the international community, because it's important to the university and it's important to our campus," said John Boyle III, a special assistant to university President Ronald Berkman and the university's former vice president for business and finance.

Boyle said the university has discussed the potential site with the school district, which has not yet endorsed the location.

View full sizeMarvin Fong, The Plain DealerCampus International School teacher Pat Fairman directs first- and second-graders during their first day of class, held inside the First United Methodist Church in Cleveland on Aug. 19, 2010.

Beers said she's excited about the competition because it has the potential to show how an innovative and independently financed public school in Cleveland could leap beyond the design limitations imposed by the Ohio School Facilities Commission, which regulates standards for state-supported school construction in Ohio.

The rules govern new and renovated schools funded under the $1.2 billion school construction program now under way in the city.

Beers also said she's going to have her current students submit their ideas to the competition.